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Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Throwback Books – Mary Barton, by Elizabeth Gaskell

Now, where do I begin
with Elizabeth Gaskell?

As it happens, where
I began with Elizabeth Gaskell was with her most famous novel, North and South, which I read when I was
about thirteen years old. I then read Wives
and Daughters and Cranford, and
several shorter works – and then promptly and unjustly forgot about Elizabeth
Gaskell. That is, until last month, when I picked up Mary Barton.

Written in 1848, Mary Barton follows the lives of several
families of industrial workers in Victorian Manchester. It centres on Mary
Barton, a young seamstress, and her father factory worker John Barton. After
the death of his wife, John Barton falls into depression and becomes involved
in the Chartist movement. Meanwhile his daughter grows up unattended, and
attracts two suitors – one, her childhood friend Jem Wilson, and the other, Harry
Carson, the son of a wealthy mill owner. But this is so much more than a love
story. Its chief subjects are the poverty and difficulties of the working class
in Manchester, and what such poverty can drive them too. The novel is bound up
in factory politics, but never in a way that would be inaccessible to a modern
reader. Moreover, the novel shifts effortlessly between the political and the
domestic, and it is a deeply human story, a tale of grief, violence and family,
the darkest of Gaskell’s novels that I have read.

What impresses me
again and again about Elizabeth Gaskell’s work is just how varied it is. I
often think of Gaskell as a more political Jane Austen – or at least, that was
how North and South felt to me, and Wives and Daughters too has a similar
feeling to a Jane Austen novel. Cranford
reminds me of Trollope or of Dickens in its satire, or like a comic version of George
Eliot in its dealings with small town drama. I recently read the Gaskell
Penguin Little Black Classic, The Old
Nurse’s Story – two gothic tales that are more akin to works by the Bronte
or Wilkie Collins. Yet Mary Barton reads
more like Hardy or Gissing. Of course, I should really stop comparing Elizabeth
Gaskell to other writers of the period. The fact is that she herself was an incredibly
skilled writer, with novels more varied and unique than perhaps any other
writer of the period. She seems to have been involved in every literary
movement of the time, in Realism, in the Gothic, in novels of social
commentary. She is one of the few Victorian novelists who I think deals equally
and equally well with both issues of large cities and small country villages. In
her novels you can see such astounding breadth of content, and with every
single book I read by her I am freshly amazed.

Turning to Mary Barton specifically, there are so
many things I love about this novel. One is certainly its unpredictability. I
love Victorian literature, but not all Victorian novels are page-turners. I’ve
gotten used to the patterns of them, and I can sometimes predict the endings
(especially in terms of romantic plot lines) from the start. But this was
absolutely not the case with Mary Barton.
There have been few Victorian novels I’ve flown through quite as fast. There
gets to a certain startling point in the book when it becomes near impossible
to put it down. It is an intensely complex and interesting novel, dramatic, moving
and engaging throughout.

The writing and the
character development is superb. What I like about Mary Barton as a character
is that she is by no means saintly. She is vain and ambitious, but she is also
deeply sympathetic, and wonderful to read. She is also a refreshingly strong heroine
for a novel of the 1840s, and the independence and determination she shows in
the second half of the novel were thrilling to read. Her friend and neighbour
Margaret, a blind girl who makes her living by singing, is a similarly strong
and intriguing character. John Barton too is well done, and Jem was one of my
favourites. I always admire the complexities of Gaskell’s characters; each one,
however minor, has their own internal battles and frustrations, their own pains
and difficulties.

I loved Mary Barton not only because it is a
wonderful novel, but because of the fascinating history it tells. It is a deep
and interesting portrait of working-class life in Manchester in the Victorian
period. It deals with day-to-day life, as well as with the struggles of poverty
and illness, and the difficult position many women found themselves in at the
time. It is the sort of novel that will appeal to those that love Dickens or
Gissing or Hardy – and anyone who has read North
and South and found themselves intrigued by the story of the Higgins family
will definitely find Mary Barton engaging.

All in all, this has
been one of my favourite reads of the year. I was so thoroughly moved and
engaged by the characters and story, and once more Gaskell’s skill as a
novelist impressed me so much. Mary
Barton is now rivalling North and
South for my favourite Gaskell novel. And considering that a year ago I
ranked North and South as my seventh
favourite novel of all time (http://justbooksandthings.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/things-few-of-my-favourite-novels-part-2.html),
that’s a pretty high recommendation.

Greatest
strength: The
characterisation and the dynamism of the story.

Greatest
weakness: There
were a few things about the ending which felt a little contrived and while I
loved the ending in general, the last page or two felt a little too neat and
miraculous. But this is a minor point for a book I loved so much.

Let’s
finish on a quote:
‘I don’t want money, child! Damn their charity and their money! I want work,
and it is my right. I want work.’

Next
week: I’m a tad behind, so we’ll just have to see what happens...